Nuclear disarmament

Depleting stockpiles

Russia and America have far fewer nuclear weapons than they once did

ON MONDAY July 6th, Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev, the presidents of America and Russia, concluded negotiations in Moscow with an agreement to trim their countries' nuclear arsenals. Under the new accord, Russia and America will reduce the number of strategic warheads to between 1,500 and 1,675 each within seven years of a new treaty being signed, probably by the end of the year. This replaces their current obligations under a 2002 treaty to cut warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200 by 2012. Russia has almost 2,800 strategic warheads at present, 600 more than America. While these are still deadly enough to destroy most living things, stockpiles have shrunk to a fraction of their cold war peaks.